It’s a question most of us have thought, blearily, as we struggle to wake up – why does the snooze on iPhone only give you nine minutes?

Why not a nice, round ten, for instance?

The answer’s all to do with the mechanical origins of clocks, according to experts on Q and A site Quora.

Back when electro-mechanical clocks were all the rage, it was hard to set alarms accurately – often the gearing systems meant you had to aim for the nearest minute.

Hence, makers would go for ‘less than’ 10 minutes, ie nine minutes.

Writing on Quora, iOS support expert Nic Lake says, ‘Early clocks and watches had gears that made it difficult to set a snooze for *exactly* 10 minutes. So they aimed for *less than* 10 minutes, aka 9 minutes. Was a pretty standard thing till the 50s.

Antique clock collector David J Slavik says,’It is my belief that when the first hybrid electric clocks arrived THAT is when a seeming 9 minute standard was adopted. These old electric clocks physically flipped cards to indicate the time.